A glossary of SEO and content terms for search and content marketing professionals.

1. 99
NINETY-NINE
SEO
TERMS EVERY
MARKETER
SHOULD KNOW

2. #
301 REDIRECT
a method of telling web browsers and
search engines that a web page or site
has been permanently moved to a new
location.
404 NOT FOUND
the error shown when the server was
unable to locate the URL. 404 error
pages can negatively affect search
engine rankings.

3. A
AFFILIATE
a site that markets products or
services provided by another site in
exchange for monetary compensation.
ALGORITHM
a program used by search engines to
determine what pages to suggest for a
given search query.

4. A
ALT TEXT
(alternative text) is a word or phrase
that can be inserted as an attribute in
an HTML (Hypertext Markup
Language) document to tell Web site
viewers the nature or contents of an
image.

5. A
ANCHOR TEXT
the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink.
In modern browsers, it is often blue
and underlined.
AUTHORITY SITE
a very high quality, trusted website that
ranks higher than others with similar
content.

6. B
BACKLINK
an incoming hyperlink from one
webpage back to your own webpage
or website. Also called inbound links.
BLACK HAT SEO
the use of SEO tactics that do not
follow search engine rules designed to
increase page rank in search engine
queries.

7. B
BOOKMARK
a link to a website saved electronically
in a browser to enable quick access in
the future.
BOT
programs, also called spiders or
crawlers, used by search engines to
run autonomously and gather
information across the internet to use
in search engine indexes.

8. B
BOUNCE RATE
the percentage of people who leave
your website after viewing only a single
page.
BREAD CRUMBS
website navigation that typically
appears horizontally across the top of
the webpage to provide links back to
previous pages or lists other pages on
the website to find more information.

9. C
CANONICAL ISSUE
the problem that arises when 301
redirects are not properly placed and
creates duplicate content allowing the
same piece of content to be accessed
by more than one URL.
CLOAK
a black hat technique of delivering
different content to the search engine
spider than that seen by actual users.

10. C
CMS
(Content Management System) a
computer application that allows users
to create, edit, and publish content
from a central interface (such as
WordPress) and eliminating the need
for content creators to have
sophisticated coding skills.

11. C
CONTENT
the writings and images associated
with a brand that appear on the
webpage and offsite that are designed
to inform, entertain, and engage target
audiences.
These may include landing pages,
blogs, podcasts, videos, ebooks,
webinars, case studies, infographics,
white papers, and other materials.

12. C
CONVERSION
the transformation of a website visitor
to a person that has completed a
measurable goal such as filling out a
form, signing up for a product demo,
ordering a product, or any goal
established by the website owner.
CONVERSION
FORM
a form used on a website to collect
information about site visitors in order
to target them for additional follow-up.

13. C
CONVERSION RATE
the percentage of website visitors to
complete the desired action such as
filling out a form.
CRAWLER
a program that browses websites
systematically looking for information to
include in search engine indexes.

14. C
CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) the coding
language that determines how pages
will appear on the website and
includes things like headers and links.

15. D
DIRECTORY
a site created to provide links to
websites. Yahoo! Directory and DMoz
are two examples.
DOMAIN
the main web address for a website,
commonly referred to as a domain
name.

16. D
DOMAIN
AUTHORITY
a measure of the power of a domain
name. One of many search engine
ranking factors.
DOORWAY
(or gateway) a black hat technique of
creating web pages to attract web
crawlers using specific phrases with
the intention of sending visitors to a
different page.

17. D
DUPLICATE
CONTENT
identical or significantly similar content
that appears on the internet in more
than one place.
DYNAMIC WEBSITE
a web page that displays different
content each time it’s viewed. What is
shown on the page is based on user
interaction or pre-set conditions, such
as time of day.

18. F
FINDABILITY
the ease with which information on a
website can be found on the internet
either from within the website or from
search engines.
FRICTION
anything that gets in the way of
conversions and can include slow
loading pages, typos on a form, pages
not optimized for mobile, or anything
that impedes a visitor from concluding
your desired action.

19. F
FRAMES
a web page design element that
allows two pieces of content to appear
on the same page, each inside its
own box.
FOLD
the place on a website page where
the page is cut off by the bottom of
the user’s monitor or screen. Search
engines place priority on content
above the fold.

20. G
GIZMO
small applications installed in
webpages to use information fetched
from other websites and displayed
locally. Also known as a widget,
gadget, or portlet.
GOOGLE JUICE
the imaginary substance that allows
web pages to rank higher in Google
SERPs. Google juice is associated
with links from high authority websites.

21. H
HEADINGS
the text on your website that is placed
under one of the heading tags. H1 to
H6. Since these are more prominent
that regular text, keywords and
phrases should be included in
headings to improve search engine
rankings.

22. H
HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language - the
formatting and layout code that search
engines read. SEO best practices
include keeping HTML as clean as
possible to allow search engine
crawlers to find your content easily and
often.
HUB
a highly trusted web page that links
out to other quality pages relating to
the same topic.

23. I
IMPRESSION
the number of times a website has
been visited or viewed by a user.
INBOUND LINK
a link from one site into another. Links
from high authority sites can boost site
rankings for the receiving site.
INDEXED PAGES
the pages on a site which have been
indexed.

24. I
INTERNAL LINK
a link from one page on a website to
another page on the same website.
INDEX
(NOUN) a database of web pages and
their content used by the search
engines.
(VERB) to add a web page to a search
engine index.

25. J
JAVASCRIPT
a scripting language designed to allow
web designers to include interactive
content.

26. K
KEYWORD
or key phrase - the word or phrase a
user enters when searching on the
internet.
KEYWORD
CANNIBALIZATION
the excessive use of the same
keyword on a website making it difficult
for search engines and users to find
the best page for specific information.

27. K
KEYWORD DENSITY
the percentage of the same keywords
on a single page. A page with too high
of keyword density will be penalized by
the search engines.
KEYWORD
RESEARCH
the process of finding relevant
keywords and keyword phrases to use
in content marketing and advertising
efforts.

28. K
KEYWORD
STUFFING
a black hat SEO technique to increase
the density of keywords on a page to
get the attention of search engine bots.

29. L
LANDING PAGE
the page visitors first land on when
they find your website through the
SERPs.
LATENT SEMANTIC
INDEXING
also known as long-tail searches -
search queries that use three or more
words strung together to resemble the
way people commonly look for
information.

30. L
LINK
a hypertext link reference that takes
you to another document or another
position in the same document when
you click on it.
LINK BAIT
website content designed to attract
attention and encourage others to
create hyperlinks from their own sites
or via social media in an effort to
improve SERP rankings and increase
authority.

31. L
LINK BUILDING
the process of actively cultivating more
inbound links to your site.
LINK CONDOM
any of several methods used to
protect outgoing links and prevent
them from endorsing a bad site or to
discourage link spam in user
generated content.

32. L
LINK EXCHANGE
an agreement between two sites to
provide inbound links to each other
with the goal of increasing search
engine rankings. Link exchanges are
often facilitated by sites with directory
pages.
LINK TEXT
the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink
that signals to the search engines the
relevancy of the landing page
associated with it.

33. L
LONG TAIL
KEYWORD
keywords with two or more words in a
phrase representing a more targeted
search query by the user. Long tail
keywords are more targeted, less
popular, and less competitive than
single, generalized terms.

34. M
MARKETING
INTELLIGENCE
data, such as that provided by
GinzaMetrics, that provides brands
with the insights they need into
marketing channels, content, and
competitors to drive strategic
decisions about what content to
create and which channels to
pursue.

35. M
MASHUP
mixing at least two applications or
other small programs on a single
page.
METADATA
the data that tells search engines
what your website and content are
about. Metadata includes meta
description, meta keywords, and
meta tags.

36. M
META
DESCRIPTION
a brief description of the contents
of a page stated in less than 155
and more than 5 words that helps
search engines and users
determine the relevancy of website
content.

37. M
METRICS
the data used to understand the
activity on a website. Basic metrics
include things like the number of
visitors, bounce rate, page views,
and average session duration.
MIRROR SITE
a nearly identical or duplicate
website that uses a different IP
address. Creating mirror sites or
mirror pages is in violation of
search engine rules and can result
in severe penalties.

38. N
NATURAL SEARCH
RESULT
also known as organic results. These
are the search engine results that are
not sponsored or paid for in any way
and are organized by relevancy.
Organic search results can be
improved by following good SEO
practices and including relevant
keywords in metadata and content.

39. N
NEGATIVE SEO
a form of sabotage using links and
anchor text in an attempt to manipulate
search results and lower the ranking of
competing pages.
Using an analytics tool that provides
daily crawl data to your site will help
you to identify and remove negative
SEO before it causes damage to your
site through search engine penalties.

40. N
NOFOLLOW
a command placed in the code of a
page to prevent a link from passing
SEO credit to another site. One form
of a link condom used when linking to
external pages that you do not want to
endorse.
NOINDEX
a code which tells search engine
crawlers not to index a page so that it
cannot be found in search. A form of
link condom.

41. O
ORGANIC LINK
links to your content and website from
other websites that consider the
content of value.

42. P
PAGE TITLE
the name you give your webpage.
Page title is viewed at the top of the
webpage and in search engine
listings. Target, relevant keywords
should be included in the first few
words of the title.
PAGE RANK
a value between 0 and 1 assigned by
Google to rate the value of your web
page in terms of popularity, trust,
authority, and overall SEO value. Note:
page rank relevancy is changing.

43. Q
QUERY
the actual words a user enters into the
search engine, usually in a form of a
question. The most common queries
begin with “How to”, “What is”, “What
does”, “Where is”, “Who is”, “Why is”,
“Why do”, etc..

44. R
RANKING FACTOR
one of many factors Google and other
search engines take into account
when ranking a web page including
the number of inbound links, the
contents of the title tag, and relevancy
to the search query.
RECIPROCAL LINK
two sites that link to each other in the
hopes of raising SEO value. Search
engines don’t consider reciprocal links
as high value links because of their
mutually beneficial nature.

45. R
REDIRECT
a method of alerting browsers and
search engines that a page has
moved when a site has moved to a
new domain or when a doorway page
has been employed. 301 redirects are
used for a temporary change of
location and 302 redirects are used for
permanent changes.
ROBOTS.TXT
a standard used by websites to direct
and control web crawlers and other
bots.

46. R
REFERER STRING
a piece of information that follows a
user from page to page on the web.
Marketers and SEOs use this
information to determine the customer
journey and to know how target
audiences are finding their websites.
RSS FEED
Really Simple Syndication - RSS feeds
are a way to get automatic updates
from a website. Setting up an RSS
feed for your blog will allow your
audiences to get updates as you post
them.

47. S
SCRAPE
a technique of using bots to copy
content from one website to another.
The practice is illegal and used by
spam websites to fill their pages with
content from legitimate sites.
SEARCH ENGINE
a website designed to match user
queries to the most relevant content
available on the internet. Google and
Yahoo are examples of search
engines.

48. S
SEO
Search Engine Optimization - the
practice of making sure that a website
and its individual pages are easily
crawled by search engine bots.
SEO best practices ensure that pages
are well structured, landing pages and
other content on the site have the
necessary metadata and use relevant
keywords wisely, and that no 404
errors, or other coding errors, exist.

49. S
SERP
Search Engine Results Page - the
page users are sent to after entering a
query in the search bar. Typically a
SERP contains 10 results on the first
page, which makes website and
content optimization critical to being
included in these top results.
SITE MAP
a page, or specially structured group
of pages that provide a map of all the
webpages on the site to help search
engine spiders index the website and
find all the site pages.

50. S
SOCIAL
BOOKMARK
a practice of saving bookmarks to a
public site as a way to introduce
others with similar interests to relevant
sites.
SOCK PUPPET
a fake identity created in order to
anonymously promote a person or
brand through blogs, wikis, forums,
and social sites.

51. S
SPAMDEXING
also known as search engine
spamming and black hat SEO.
Spamdexing is the practice of
deliberately modifying web pages to
manipulate search engine indexes into
ranking them higher in the SERPs.
SPIDER
a specialized bot used by search
engines to find and add web pages to
their indexes.

52. S
SPIDER TRAP
a set of web pages designed to create
an infinite loop of links that prevent
automated scraping or email address
harvesting and may cause a poorly
designed spider (crawler) to crash.
SLASH PAGE
often animated, introduction pages to
a website. Although splash pages look
attractive to users, they have very little
SEO value because they lack textual
content and crawlers can only
navigate through text links.

53. S
STATIC PAGE
a page on a website with fixed content
that delivers the same content to every
visitor every time. A static page does
not contain dynamic programming
languages. Static pages provide good
SEO value for a site.

54. T
TEXT LINK
an HTML link that contains only text
and does not include graphic or
special codes. Text links are most
easily read by crawlers.
TIME ON PAGE
the amount of time a visitor spends on
any one webpage. The longer users
engage in content on a page, the
higher the relevancy of the content.

55. T
TOOLBAR RANK
not the same as page rank. Toolbar
rank is a value between 0-10 given to
a webpage to indicate its importance.
However, toolbar rank is updated
infrequently by Google and is not a
good indicator of a page’s current
position.
TRAFFIC
another name for website visitors. The
goal of SEO best practices is to
improve relevant traffic to a website.

56. T
TOP HEAVY
a Google penalty targeted at sites with
too much advertising copy above the
fold, or sites that use spammy
techniques of cluttering web pages
with irrelevant content, making it
difficult for users to find the information
they were searching for.
TRAFFIC RANK
a comparison of how much traffic your
site gets as compared to other related
sites on the internet.

57. U
URL
Uniform Resource Locator - the web
address of pages on a website,
beginning with www.
USER GENERATED
CONTENT
any content that is created by
consumers or users of a website or
other online system and published for
the use of other consumers or users.

58. W
WALLED
GARDEN
within a website, a walled
garden is a group of pages
that are linked to each other,
but restrict users from
accessing other areas of the
web from those pages. In the
internet environment, a walled
garden is a method used by
ISPs to restrict access to
specific areas of the web, as
used in education to keep
children out of porn sites and
other undesirable material.

59. W
WHITE HAT
SEO
the practice of optimizing
websites and pages to
increase findability while
limiting processes and
techniques to those that
adhere to search engine rules
and policies.

60. 99
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